While unprecedented rainfall in the UK has inundated parts of Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Scotland this winter, the flood-prone town of Pickering in North Yorkshire has (so far) stayed dry.Pickering’s residents, it seems, were protected by relatively low-cost flood defences developed in a project involving Forest Research and Durham, Oxford and Newcastle universities, funded by Defra, Ryedale District Council, North Yorkshire County Council and the Flood Levy.
Instead of building a £10m concrete floodwall through the town centre, they spent around £2m on a carefully engineered concrete bund that could store up to 120,000 cubic metres of floodwater upstream of the town. In the catchments of Pickering Beck (draining through Pickering) and the neighbouring catchment of the River Seven (draining through the village of Sinnington) they planted 29 hectares of forest and installed 167 leaky dams of logs and nearly 200 smaller obstructions, made of heather...